A birthday letter to my son

An epistolary essay about guidance and letting go.

Mar 13, 2022

"Dad, who am I?"

You ask me with caramel chocolate in your mouth while we are sitting on a fallen tree trunk. I am surprised by your question. The way in which you ask the question shows me you don't mean to ask if you are your name, Bran, but who you are beyond that.

I wonder what sparked your question. Could it be because you feel so connected to your senses at this very moment? This moment where you sit out in the sun, eating your chocolate and enjoying nature.

Has this moment of bliss helped you notice that your sense of self can dissolve and that the dividing line between you, and not-you is nothing but an illusion?

Could it be that, as a child, you’ve always been able to find that place of connection between yourself and the world? And you are now becoming old and bright enough to ask a question about it, just in time before you lose that awareness growing up.

It is such a profound question from you, having turned seven today, that I am too dumbfounded to find any words. "Who am I?" is a question I have been asking myself my entire life. And I feel I have only been able to answer it—somewhat satisfactorily—in recent years. So as I realize you are asking me this now, at this young age, it makes me fear you'll go through life experiencing similar pains like me. A pain stemming from the frustration of remembering that you were once connected to all things, but for some reason not able to get that sensation back.

I fear you’ll struggle because you don't know who you are or what you want out of life. So I feel the significance of giving you a "good" answer weighing down on my shoulders.

I wonder what to tell you. Should I tell you that I feel that every human being is a unique perspective of this universe? That we each are a drop of water in the ocean of consciousness. That your awareness, beyond your Bran-mask, is the same awareness I have, beyond my Jibran-mask. That we are the same Being, just as one water molecule has the exact same pattern as another water molecule, but they are still two separate molecules of water.

How do I explain all that to a seven-year-old? And on top of that, what if I give you an answer that is my answer, and you start living a life where you try to fulfill your father's idea of who you should be, even if it's not what you want or need?

An hour before you asked me, "Who am I?" you threw a tantrum at home. You were both excited and anxious for our guests to arrive. Grandparents, nieces, and nephews planned to come for your birthday in the afternoon, but you assumed they'd come in the morning. This misalignment between your expectations and reality was exactly what you didn't need on top of heightened emotions. So I convinced you, with considerable effort, to bike to the woods together. I hoped that being out in nature would give you some solace.

We arrived at the forest, and you made sure to proudly lock your birthday gift—your new, second-hand bike. Then we continued on the sunlit path into the woods, hearing woodpeckers hammering all around us and you pointing out the nuthatches looking for insects beneath loose tree bark. Then we passed an especially curly dog on its way to its owner, making sure to pet it. The dog’s curls made me recall my story about self-acceptance I had published just this morning, the title of which was “How I learned to love my curls.” I wondered if you would ever feel the need to write such a story. On the one hand, I hoped you would because it means you’ll be actively partaking in self-reflection. But, on the other hand, I hope you’ll always accept yourself and don’t ever feel the need to write such a piece.

As we walked along, you suddenly yelled, "Dad, look at this!" I turned around and walked back to where you stood. In your hand, you held a beautiful stone, painted black, with a white rabbit and red hearts around it. "It's a Happy Stone," you said. And indeed, we've found them from time to time in the forest. A sweet person painted them and left them for others to find, to help people be mindful of the happy moments in their lives. As we continued walking, we found another stone just a few minutes later. This time a sea-blue colored one, also with a rabbit on it. I put it in your jacket pocket, and we continued on our path. "To the swamp!" you said with excitement.

We crossed the swampy part of the forest, which, unbeknownst to you, borders the area of the graveyard where infants and children are put to rest. It crossed my mind that you rarely recall how close it was for your little sister to have lain there. The worry we all went through when she was born, and you were just two years old, staying with grandpa and grandma for so many months, clearly impacted you. But as I saw you now, I saw that you had reignited your spirit, becoming strong and radiant.

As we walked out of the swampy part of the forest, thin sheets of ice from the shallow pools cracking beneath our boots, we came to an open area with a lot of sunlight. I proposed we sit down on a small fallen tree trunk and eat some chocolate. The chocolate variety that contains hard nuggets of sweet caramel that burst in your mouth when you bite on them.

I gave you an extra big piece because it's your birthday, and chewing on it, you suddenly asked me, "Dad, who am I?"

"What is my purpose?" you ask, probably because I stayed quiet for too long, pondering your first question. Ignoring my inner dialog, I say that you can choose whatever goals you want in life. And that you can change them along the way if you want to. I talk to you about my purpose; to live a happy life while helping other people lead happy lives. Then, while I'm looking for words to explain what happiness means to me, you say, "I want to be a falconer."

You've been saying that for almost two years now, so I indeed take you seriously. I ask you why you want to become a falconer. You tell me because it's just really cool, but you are afraid it takes too long to learn it. I say that it probably takes less time than what most other people study for their work. As we get up and start walking again, I continue talking and relate a story about how trained falcons were used to intercept "war pigeons." I explain how war pigeons were used to send messages across enemy-controlled land, even up to the second world war. Your eyes go wide with curiosity, and you playfully use your hands to mimic a falcon catching a pigeon.

Just as I'm finishing my story, we come across a giant felled tree. The other trees it took down with it still have almost all their needles, so it seems the tree was felled recently, probably during the recent storm, Eunice. Curious to look closer, we see that the inside of the tree is all rotten and filled with holes from beetle larvae.

In this instant, my stream of thoughts connects to how any big thing, just like the tree that's decaying from the inside, will create a lot of collateral damage when it finally breaks down—especially when a powerful storm hits. That big thing can be anything, an investment bank, a company, or someone’s ego.

That tree-felling storm for my decaying ego, my Jibran-mask, was the worry about your sister, Daisy, after her birth. Like the big tree that was torn down, which you are happily climbing now, I also created some collateral emotional damage within you. Harm that I hope will not hold you back too much. But in the end, like the fallen tree, my ego toppling over created an opportunity for a better life for you as well as me.

You climb down from the tree carrying a big stick with you, and I imagine the tree being happy it can still provide some use, even in death. And I wonder, will I leave you something of use after I am gone one day?

You say you want to carve your own path through the brush instead of walking the path laid out in front of us. The symbolism of you choosing your own path in life is not lost on me, and I smile while I follow you.

As we come out of the underbrush and onto the regular path, I realize it's just a few meters from where we found one of the Happy Stones, and I say so to you. Without stopping to think, you walk up to a hollow tree stump next to the path and reach into your jacket pocket, feeling for the Happy Stone. You take out the stone and place it in a nook in the tree stump. I stare at you blankly, and as if you read my mind, you say, "So someone else can find one and be happy."

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